


when the sword outwears its sheath

by DeTaverny



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (but no feelings were involved in that), Anal Sex, Feelings Realization, First Time, Friends to Lovers, IN SPACE!, Intersex Bucky, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Marathon Sex, Mentions of Non-Consensual Body Modification, Oral Sex, Pining, Porn with Feelings, Space Hotels, Space Missions, Vaginal Sex, Virgin Bucky, brief mention of past Thor/Loki, it's mostly sex tbh, sex for reasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:21:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25215424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeTaverny/pseuds/DeTaverny
Summary: Three years after the reversal of the Snap, Thor and Bucky think they have found a new planet for the Asgardians to settle.Unfortunately, the night before they set out, Bucky reveals that he has a pesky little problem that needs to be taken care of before he can join Thor's quest.Thor's always been up for a challenge.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Thor
Comments: 6
Kudos: 68
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	when the sword outwears its sheath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionessvalenti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/gifts).



"Outwitting the goblins at the other side of the lake will be simple enough, thanks to an ancient relic that Bucky and I _easily_ liberated from pirates last week," Thor finished, ignoring Bucky's snort from the back of the room. "And then we shall have the victory in hand. The gates to Einlorenheim will open. You Guardians shall find all the treasure you could wish for. And I shall claim, through magic rituals, a secure, sublime new world that I can bring my people to inhabit."

Thor leaned back in his chair. He had delivered the information as clearly and succinctly as he could, calling upon memories of his time with the Avengers for inspiration. He'd even laid out an assortment of cups and bric-a-brac on the table before him—visual aids to dramatically explain the landmarks and booby-traps they would encounter. These tips he had picked up from Fury, Natasha and Hill, who were all masters the art of the 'mission briefing'. 

He now waited for commentary and questions. Another step he'd learned the importance of from his human friends. 

However, only one of the mission details seemed to have made an impression on his audience.

"Well, I guess Rocket and Groot are sitting this one out then," Quill said.

"I am Groot." Groot sounded huffy and offended.

"Yeah, speak for yourself, Quill," Rocket snapped. "Groot and I are all in."

"But Thor just said the third step of the quest, or whatever, is a field through which, and I quote, 'a virgin shall not pass'." 

"And?" Rocket waggled his eyebrows in what was likely meant to come across as a lascivious expression. Unfortunately, those eyebrows were too fluffy to be anything but cute.

Quill let out a horrified groan. Rounding on Rocket he asked, with anguish in his voice, "What? When? _How?_ "

"None of your business. But I'll be there. And Groot, too, apparently." 

Rocket, despite all his bluster, shot Groot a shocked look, to which Groot responded with a smug, "I am Groot."

(Thor had to repress his own dismay, for while it had never occurred to him that the stipulation might discount Rocket, he had not thought Groot—so young, so brittle, so very much a tree—had ever sampled the pleasures of the flesh, or, perhaps, bark. He little wanted to imagine it.)

"Wait, Quill, are you saying you don't think Rocket fucks?" Bucky asked casually. "Rocket _definitely_ fucks." 

Bucky had been leaning quietly in the bar's private meeting room, a shadow looming over the meeting. Now, he shifted just enough for the light to dramatically illuminate his face. He caught Thor's eye. Suppressed mirth that only Thor knew him well enough to recognize made his strong jaw tremble an infinitesimal amount. Bucky knew how much Thor enjoyed ribbing Quill, and, as always, was proving his friendship by helping.

"I have no doubt that Rabbit is the most satisfying of lovers," Thor agreed serenely, laying it on extra thick in the knowledge of how it would annoy Quill while also fluffing Rocket's fur. "Of all our company, I felt no question, when I first learned of this stipulation, that he would be by my side during this quest. I will not enquire what lucky beings have enjoyed his pleasure, but I will count them as among the universe's chosen."

Quill made gagging noises while Gamora choked back a laugh. Rocket preened at the compliment.

"Now you, on the other hand…" Rocket pointed an accusing claw at Quill. "Are we going to have problems with you?" 

"I'll be there!" Quill shouted. "I'll be there times a hundred."

"Do you intend to duplicate yourself, as Thor told us that his brother could do?" Drax asked excitedly. "When did you learn such magic? Can you teach the rest of us?"

Quill shook his head and shoved past Bucky, heading outside—probably to drown the entire past five minutes in drink.

Thor surveyed the rest of the company. Quill had boasted of his conquests so lewdly and vociferously that Thor was ninety-five percent sure the man had had some experience. Gamora, though she continued to rebuff Quill's pathetic advances, must have experienced enough in her original timeline to wear such a bored expression. Drax, of course, had been married, and Thor felt relatively certain that coitus was necessary for his species to father children. And, years before they had ever met, Thor had heard tales, from Steve, of Bucky's prowess with women; the Casanova of Brooklyn, whatever that meant.

A glance between Thor and Gamora confirmed that they were of the same mind regarding Mantis and Nebula, who sat quietly shy in a corner together. Thor had no wish to inconvenience anyone or to draw undue and embarrassing attention. He would throttle anyone (likely Quill), who dared to tease them.

In order to allow them to easily make their excuses the next day, he continued, "I am aware that not all of us desire gold. And given that the other goal involves claiming a planet for Asgardians, I will cast no doubts or aspersions on whosoever chooses to sit this one out. This is my fight, Asgard's fight, for which I will pay my share of the bounty."

No one responded.

"Can you go over the part where we have to scale a cliff while blindfolded again?" Bucky asked, his lips stretched into a long horizontal frown, after the silence had gone on too long. He could always be counted on to end an awkward silence by shifting the subject to something practical. "That part sounded tricky."

* * *

The space station Bucky had chosen for the meeting with the Guardians was home to one of the richest trading posts in this quadrant of the galaxy. The hotel in which Thor had booked each of them a room afforded far more luxurious accommodations than the cramped quarters of their ship. Bucky had originally balked at the expense, but Thor had held firm on his desire, nay, _need_ , for a respite from their relative poverty. He'd ignored all of Bucky's affectionately muttered grumblings about 'pampered princes'.

The first luxury Thor enjoyed was a long, hot, lightly scented bath. His room's set-up, with its porcelain hot tub and artfully arranged dome of nozzles, must have been inspired by the bathing rituals of the Light Elves. The cleansing fluid, which was not quite water, hit him with a pleasant tingle, and also created amusing light patterns on his skin. When he was finished, the pool emptied and the same nozzles puffed warm air to dry him off. They even fluffed his hair and beard. 

Clean, dry, and clad in soft sleep clothes, he slipped between the sheets of his large bed and reached for his tablet to resume the spy program that he had downloaded from Bucky's collection the night before. 

An inspiringly flawless mission briefing had just ended when Thor heard a knock on the door. 

"Yes? Who is it?" he asked with thunder in his voice, assuming that the overly attentive housekeeping staff had come to refill his music bubbles yet again.

"It's me." Bucky's soft voice sounded through the microphone. "Can I come in?"

Thor sat up and pressed his back against the wall behind him. He fumbled with the remote beside him to unlock the door. "Yes, of course you…"

Right away, Thor noticed that Bucky's face was paler than usual. He entered the room with less than his usually determined gait. His long brown hair hung about his face with the messy looseness imparted by a recent bath. He wore jeans with a soft red tee-shirt that reminded Thor of the clouds over the desert on Muspelheim. It was a fresh shirt; today's had sported an ugly sauce stain across the front, splashed there by Thor himself during dinner. 

"Oh, good, you're alone," Bucky said, shutting the door behind him and standing very awkwardly in front of it. 

"Why would I not be?" Thor replied. They had spent the entire day together. They had spent entire years together since leaving Earth. If Thor had ever made moves towards procuring a bedmate in all that time, Bucky would have known it.

"You got a minute?" Bucky asked.

Thor decided that nervous and embarrassed did not suit his friend. "What troubles you?"

"It's about the mission tomorrow."

"You have qualms about the plan?" Thor leaned forward to listen, because Bucky had come to him like this before, privately, in order not to show Thor up in front of others, to offer strategic suggestions that had always turned out well. Thor had always appreciated the wisdom, as well as the discretion.

Bucky continued to stand with his back and palms pressed against the door, like a frightened mage ready to dematerialize at the first sign of trouble. Except that Bucky was no mage. 

"No, the plan's fine. It's just that I can't go with you."

Thor tried to think of what about this upcoming project could have caused Bucky to decide to recuse himself. It could not have been fear, as Bucky's courage had been tested and proven in countless escapades during their time together. And it could not be lack of interest, given how wholeheartedly Bucky had always supported Thor's dream of finding a new home for the Asgardian people.

All Thor could guess was that Bucky had been summoned back to Earth. The only people with whom he kept in any kind of regular contact were Shuri and Okoye. Shuri had upgraded Natasha's old communicators to create signals strong enough to reach Bucky all the way at the edges of the galaxy. She had even set up to a video feed through which he could watch Wakandan wildlife gathering at the watering hole near his old home. If anything or anyone could stir Bucky from Thor's side, it was his Wakandan friends.

Thor should have known this would happen. For all that Bucky had taken to life in the greater universe like a blurghfril to a tree root, perhaps, in the end, Earth would always come first for him, be his true home. Perhaps Thor had failed to create enough of a home to keep him. 

Not to mention that Bucky did have a most radiant princess who adored him.

He could feel his heart breaking, as another friend—his last, his best—seemed about to leave him, alone, again.

But, bravely, and with an echo of the good cheer that had once upon a time blanketed him so effortlessly, Thor said, "They have need of you in Wakanda. I see. Well, I will miss you, but I will understand if you must leave me." 

"What? There's something wrong in Wakanda? Why, have you heard from Shuri?"

"No, not at all. It was merely an assumption." Thor felt that he was swimming in deep, uncertain waters. Slowly, he ventured, "So you are not returning to Earth?"

"No."

"Then why—"

Too fast, almost incomprehensibly fast, especially when whispered through clenched teeth, Bucky interrupted, "I can't come on the mission because I'm a virgin."

Thor squinted at him. "Surely not."

"You think I'd lie about it?"

"No, I would never question your—"

"You think anything less than an actual, logistical, magical barrier would make me fink out on you?"

This answer, more than anything else Bucky could have said, rallied Thor's mood. Bucky _didn't_ want to leave him. He _did_ still care. 

Thor took a deep breath, and said, "I did not intend any offense. I was only surprised to hear it. I am certain…"

"We've been traveling together for years now. You ever seen me with anyone? You ever seen me even try?"

"That signifies little. You have not seen me try either. You could be cleverly discreet. I, more than most, have seen the stealth of which you are capable. Or, perhaps, like me, you have simply not felt inclined as of late." Thor rubbed one of his hands over his face, hating his inability to get the words out. He had never been shy about these topics before. But then again, such conversations had usually remained firmly in the realm of the bawdy—joyous retellings of conquests, no different from boasting about a successful boar hunt or battle. Few, other than Jane, had ever asked him to discuss sex more earnestly. "But no matter what has or has not happened recently, I know you had women in your youth. Steve said...”

“Steve had hang-ups about that time so big that... He must have heard what he wanted to hear. Probably thought I was being a gentleman by leaving details out.”

"So, nothing progressed with any of these women?"

"No, not far enough to... I didn't…" Bucky looked at the floor, uncharacteristically bashful. He paused, as though about to make a desperate confession. "I got close once. It was during the war. There was a British troop stationed in the same area of France as mine. Guy named Peter."

The way Bucky's gaze softened, and grew wistful yet hungry, told Thor everything he needed to know. Thor had spent most of his time on Earth in New York and London, but Jane and his Avenger friends had let drop remarks indicating that seeing men together in the street was a relatively recent development, a tolerant boon enjoyed in certain cities, but not everywhere. In many places, such things remained criminal.

Thor, who had considered no one and nothing off-limits in his reckless youth, had shrugged off the information as yet another example of the strangeness and silliness of humans. Lacking exposure to the colorful variety of species that made up the universe, they had imagined up subdivisions within their own species, and created arbitrary rules about what should and should not mix. 

Bucky, Thor now had cause to remember, had grown up before the switch had taken place in New York. 

None of Earth's eccentricities had affected Thor until now. Until his dear Bucky, the only constant comfort he'd found since Thanos, was standing in front of him and looking unhappy.

This would not stand.

"What happened with this Peter?" Thor asked, already knowing that the answer would be 'not much', given both Bucky's vernacular and the fact that they were having this conversation in the first place.

"Not much," Bucky said, on cue. "There were always people around. But we had plans. He said once we got to Amiens, the Brits were going to station all the officers in this abandoned hotel. He'd have his own room. We were gonna… He never made it to Amiens."

That did not sound like 'getting close' to Thor. It sounded like nothing except one more notch in Bucky's too-tight misery belt.

"I see. I am sorry," was all he could think to say. 

"It happened. It was a war," Bucky said, with the practiced echo of phlegmatic resignation that never failed to wound Thor's already battered heart. 

"I'm sure it happened all the time. But I am sorry to hear it happened to _you_ , my friend."

"Thanks."

"And then came your long ordeal, followed by your fugitive period," Thor reasoned aloud. "And Thanos. But you are free of it all now. You and I made a pact to begin a new chapter. Perhaps in this I can help you, as you have helped me. Do you want me to call someone? A space station this big has got to have a wide variety of options on offer. I'm sure we could find something humanoid enough to satisfy."

"No, I don't want that." Bucky shuddered. "I don't want to pay someone."

"Well, I could accompany you to a place where we might meet people," Thor tried next. "Perhaps not tonight, not in time for the mission, but soon. In London, Darcy taught me the art of being a 'wingman'. I believe the skills are applicable anywhere and to any species."

Bucky laughed, but it was a bitter, hollow, unmelodic thing. "You'd make a terrible wingman. Not to mention, everyone would be all over _you_."

"Once upon a time perhaps, but not now. You would be the one that everyone's sensory biology would turn towards. You know how interested people always are in genuine Terrans, and, even beyond your more obvious attractions, you are the single most extraordinary example of one that exists. Anyone would consider themselves lucky to go to bed with you. I could help you secure…"

Bucky shook his head and moved to reopen the door. "I just came to explain. Make whatever excuse you think will work to the others. Your idea about Shuri needing me was good. I'll hide out here. Call me when you're done, and I'll come find you."

"Your counsel, your aim, and your good cheer will be missed. But if that is what you wish, I will make discreet excuses to the team. They would never guess the truth anyway. And I hope you know that there is no shame in your lack of experience. "

"Thanks," Bucky replied, but his face still wore a mask of sadness. "Good luck tomorrow."

Suddenly, Thor could no longer stand this. They had never been awkward before, and it physically pained him to start. He reached out a hand and gestured at the end of the bed. "Don't go. Come. Sit. You know you are always welcome in my quarters, so stop looking as though I have made you unwelcome."

"You haven't made me feel unwelcome. You're great. It's me," Bucky explained without moving closer. "I just… I hate not being there for you."

"We've done everything together since defeating Thanos, yes," Thor agreed, finishing Bucky's unfinished thought. The past three years flashed behind his eyes. They'd faced every single endeavor, both frivolous and death defying, together. From the time they'd run out of fuel in the middle of hyper-drive, to the time Bucky's arm had gotten stuck in a keg. Three years should have felt like nothing to Thor, but time had been moving slower for him for the past fifteen years, ever since he'd been banished to Earth. He'd been savoring more days, accumulating more memories worth recollecting—more of them than in a whole century before.

"Take care of yourself, okay?" Bucky turned again to leave.

"What about me?" Thor blurted out, mouth working faster than his brain. He hated the idea of Bucky leaving in such a mood. He had just remembered their pact to face everything together. Why not this, of course this… More comfortable than a whore, more certain than someone in a bar.

Bucky froze, all his prodigious back muscles clenching underneath his soft shirt. When he finally turned around, his face was pointedly blank. 

"What?"

Thor knew he'd look like a fool, and worse, a thoughtless, callous fool if he retracted now, so he doubled down. "You need someone to relieve you of this impediment. I glean that you would like it to happen with someone you know, someone you trust. Moreover, if I have interpreted correctly, you would prefer a man. I can satisfy all of these qualifications. It could be yet another adventure that I accompany you on." 

"You would… You'd do that for me?"

"I would consider it an honor to help you."

"But you're not… You don't want me."

"I have not thought of you as such before, no," Thor answered honestly, but the more he spoke, and the more the idea took shape in his mind, the more it felt inevitable, correct. When he saw the way Bucky had shut down at his words, he clarified, "However, I meant it when I said anyone would consider themselves lucky to bed such a one as you. _I_ would consider myself lucky. Although it has not actually been 'forever', for me, I have not been with anyone since Jane. We could find comfort together in this, as we have done in everything else."

"You're offering to… This isn't a joke?"

"It wouldn't be a very funny one if it were."

Bucky clenched and unclenched his metal fist a few times, but remained otherwise still. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, of course." Thor, who was not accustomed to having his ideas questioned this repeatedly, began to grow warm, both with irritation and, perhaps, something else.

"Things wouldn't get weird?" Bucky asked.

"I don't see why they should. It's only sex. A brief—well, hopefully not embarrassingly brief, on my part—romp."

Bucky snorted. "'Only' sex."

"You'll see once we've finished that, while exceedingly pleasant, it is not the all-encompassing, life-changing, heavens-opening experience that songs would have you believe."

Bucky narrowed his eyes. "You ever done this before?"

"Bedded a friend? Well, no." Thor and his small group of friends in Asgard had agreed early on never to traffic with one another, for fear of fostering greater fondness between two members of the group, leading to a change in the overall dynamic. The Avengers, of course, had never evinced that kind of interest in him, nor he in they. Thor had not had many other close friends. Apart from Jane, all of his dalliances had been shallow and fleeting in nature. 

Bucky shook his head. "I meant, if you'd ever been with a guy."

"Not for a long time, but yes. We of Asgard do not feel the stigma that you of Earth do. Especially among the warrior class, such passions are common."

Bucky's eyes grew wide as Thor spoke, but then he rubbed his face, obscuring his interested expression. "What am I thinking? I can't. We can't. Look, I'm sorry I bothered you." 

Bucky really did move to open the door that time. Thor bounded out of bed and pulled him back, so forcefully that they almost toppled backwards onto the bed. But Bucky, sure-footed as always, stopped them just in time. 

"Why can't we?" Thor asked. "I see no impediments."

"It's not just that I haven't had a lot of chances. It's also that… Hydra did things to me."

Thor looked at the broad shoulder whose scars he had massaged so many times. He looked at the beautifully crafted hand that he had often watched with delighted fascination. At the sculpted abdomen and hard chest whose lines could be seen through Bucky's shirt. "You know none of it disgusts me," he said. 

Bucky saw him looking, appraising, and gulped. "Not that. That's not all they did."

Thor tried to think of what about Bucky he had failed to glimpse in their time together. Space on their first ship had been uncomfortably tight, leaving little mystery between them. Then there was that awful week stranded in the flaxon-ridden marshes of Kriglo 5, their clothes slashed to shreds by the tiny claws of the agitated flaxons; the experience had done away with any modesty that remained between them. Or so Thor had thought. He wondered what the modification might be. Perhaps a differently colored ejaculate, or a change in the shape of his cock... But no, he had seen Bucky's cock before, in the everyday instances that sometimes arose in life with a shipmate.

Then, he decided, it didn't matter.

"Bucky, have you any conception of the variety of species I have lain with? There is little you could reveal to me at which I would blanch. Trust in my affection, as I trust in you. Let us do this, so that we can fight side by side tomorrow, as we always do."

They were standing close together now, Thor's arm still clenched firmly around Bucky's gleaming bicep. Bucky's eyelashes lowered, like a lovely fan, as he considered. Something enormous seemed to hang between them. Then he licked his lips, and Thor knew the thing was a go.

"Okay." 

They stood staring at one another like that for far too long. For all that Thor had pressed for this, for all that he had done this a thousand times, and for all that songs had been written about his prowess in this field, he found himself at a loss for how to proceed. 

Bucky broke the stalemate by reaching behind his head to shift the elastic tie he wore on his wrist to his hair, creating a ponytail. It was a motion Thor had watched him perform a hundred times, when readying himself for battle (or at least to work on the ship's plumbing). The motion signified practicality and grim determination, not the fun associated with sex. The motion took the wind even further out of Thor's sails.

In the past, Thor would have slung an arm around his would-be partner's waist. He would have sat down on the edge of the bed, pulling them into his lap, all the better to begin kissing and touching. But the easy-going, confident approach that had always worked for him felt wrong here, with a friend—moreover a virginal friend—who was merely going through with this for logistical expediency.

So, stiffly, Thor asked, "What would you like?" 

"Whatever two men can do together will be good for me. Maybe…" Some wheedling calculation seemed to be whirring in Bucky's brain before he continued with, "Actually, maybe I could fuck you? That would work. If you're up for that." 

"If that is what you wish," Thor answered, even though Bucky's tone belied his words; it didn't sound like that was what he wanted at all. 

Odd. 

Thor reached out again to Bucky’s metal bicep and absentmindedly stroked up and down. He'd often entertained the fleeting notion that Bucky would make a lover well worth pursuing, but for some abstract other person. But tonight, _Thor_ was to be that lover. Not abstract at all.

Bucky took a tentative step closer, soft lips unbearably close. His eyes flickered all over Thor’s face, from his eyes to his hair to his beard to his lips. 

A wild thought of kissing him flashed through Thor’s mind, and suddenly, it was all he wanted to do. But that had no place here, did it? They were only friends. This was not real.

“We should probably be wearing less,” Bucky whispered in a low murmur. "I mean, that'll probably help."

“Yes. Yes, that makes sense," Thor agreed readily, since his brain had slowed too much to construct ideas of his own.

Without stepping back, Bucky stripped his shirt off in a single graceful motion. Thor knew he should be similarly divesting himself, but he found himself staring. None of the flesh and metal on display was new, but looking at it so closely, so pointedly, and with the knowledge of what they were about to do, was definitely new.

Thor had always admired Bucky's handsomeness, but as an abstract, aesthetic quality. That beauty hit him differently now, however, as Bucky pulled off his trousers, one leg at a time, until he was clad only in tight blue boxer briefs (he’d insisted on continuing to wear Earth’s uncomfortable undergarments, despite no other species wearing any at all). Thor, uncharacteristically shy, fiddled idly with the string of his sleep pants. He pulled them down slowly, and, as he bent down, he stole a glance at Bucky’s strong thighs and the large, protruding bulge in the fabric. It wasn’t the impressive size of the bulge that made Thor's heartbeat quicken. It was the wondrous fact that Bucky was already most of the way to hard, despite nothing at all having occurred.

Thor removed his shirt, glad of the moment when the cloth hid his face so that he could compose himself. He was also glad not to have to see the moment when Bucky first took in Thor's body. He doubted the appreciation would be as mutually felt. While Thor had stopped drinking quite so much in the years since Thanos, he had not quite returned to his former physique. Training with Bucky had made him even bigger, largely restoring the muscles without entirely ridding him of the softness. Thor had never felt self-conscious about his looks until this moment. He had no doubt of his own worth, but Bucky, especially for this first time, deserved someone perfect, whole, unbroken. Someone equally beautiful.

When he'd fully removed the shirt, he saw Bucky staring at him, an inscrutable look on his face. 

“I should blow you first,” Bucky said, nodding to himself.

It was the last thing Thor had expected. “That will hardly help with our objective.”

“It’ll help if it gets you hard.” Bucky glanced down at Thor's completely soft length, and looked a little sad. "I know this isn't something you wanted to be doing tonight, or ever, but—" 

“You don’t have to—"

“I want to. Never done it before.”

Thor thought back to Bucky’s desire to do 'whatever two men can do together'. He understood that this offer was for _Bucky_ , not for Thor.

So, he backed up until the back of his knees hit the bed, and sat abruptly down. He watched, stunned, as Bucky dropped to his knees and shuffled closer to the bed, pushing Thor’s legs apart to get between them. 

And then, with a deep breath, the kind he took before unleashing a round of bullets, he wrapped his flesh hand around the base of Thor’s cock.

Thor had been touched by many people, but no one had ever done it so tenderly, as though he were breakable. Thor had never been breakable, not even when he was a boy, and thus had never been treated as such. 

“Jesus, Thor,” Bucky breathed when Thor's cock twitched in his hand.

“You have seen me bare before,” Thor whispered, trying not to jump out of his skin, because this was _Bucky_ , and he was touching him, and gods, it had been so long, and this was all so strange, and yet not, which made it even stranger. He didn't know what to think or to feel, and so just sat there, lost, breathless, and completely at Bucky's mercy.

“It’s bigger up close,” Bucky said, still looking at Thor's cock, first from this angle, and then another.

Thor rumbled out a laugh. “It gets even bigger than this.”

“Let’s see.” Bucky took the tip between warm, clammy fingers. Thor almost forgot to breathe when Bucky dipped his head forward, barely brushing the tip of Thor’s cock with his nose. His pink tongue slipped out to lick at the peeping head, still encased in foreskin. Then, with a deep breath, he began to stroke.

Thor let out a groan, and Bucky visibly relaxed. Reassurance that he was doing a good job seemed to be what he’d been waiting for to get into it, so Thor moaned again for good measure. He didn't need to fake it, either. Bucky's tongue was perfect. Hot, wet, soothing, the perfect amount of suction. He didn't try anything fancy, but, as on the battlefield, he didn't need to. Within seconds, Thor was leaning back, gripping the sheets in his fists, getting hard in the heavenly house of Bucky's mouth. He couldn't quite see all of Bucky's face over the swell of his belly, which made him, now for the second time in five minutes, wish for his old physique, simply so he could enjoy the sight of Bucky's mouth stretching wide to accommodate his girth. Since he couldn't see well, he reached down to touch Bucky's cheek; Bucky unexpectedly nuzzled into the touch.

Bucky reached up with his metal hand to caress Thor's balls as he sucked. The cool ridges rubbing along the clammy flesh made Thor jump in pleasure. 

“Is this okay?” Bucky asked, letting Thor's now-heavy cock slip out of his mouth to rub wetly against his cheek.

“Do you mean your arm? You can touch me with any part of you, Bucky."

Bucky hummed in answer and began sucking again, this time in earnest. It was not long—humiliatingly not long—before Thor could feel the heat in his groin pooling, straining, ready to erupt. 

"Bucky, Bucky, I'm…"

Maddeningly, Bucky paused and pulled away.

“What are you...” Thor demanded.

“If I get you off now, will that be it?”

“It what.” Thor was proud of himself for not yelling in desperation.

“I mean, will you be out of commission for the rest of the night?”

“No, of course not.” Thor wondered why Bucky asked, and then thought of what he had heard about these super-soldier experiments. “Would _you_? Or are you like Steve?”

Bucky blanched and sat back on his heels, which left Thor wanting to propel himself off the bed to chase his mouth.

“Did you fuck Steve?” Bucky had gone white and trembling.

“No, he happened to mention such things one night. I got him drunk on Asgardian spirits, and he fell into a... I don’t know how to describe his mood...”

“Confessional?” Bucky asked with a knowing nod.

“Yes, precisely." Thor did not know how or why they had stopped what they were doing and instead begun a conversation, about Steve, of all people. He wanted to scream, but he could sense Bucky's relative fragility, so he balled his fists and forced himself to speak cogently. "It was a little embarrassing for everyone involved. He mentioned that it took him many rounds with his hand before he felt, er, satisfied. Did… did _you_ fuck Steve? I mean, did you want to?" Thor added, remembering that if Bucky had, they wouldn't be here. 

"No. Sometimes I thought I _should_ want to but… no."

"And you have the same, er, gifts that he did?" 

"Yeah," Bucky replied.

"Right."

"Right." 

"So, you'll continue?" Thor asked after a slight pause. He cringed to hear how unable he'd been to keep all of the desperation out of his voice. 

Bucky grinned. "Am I doing that well?"

Thor chuckled, relived, mostly, to feel that they'd regained a modicum of their usual teasing. Trying to channel his dearly departed brother's ability for dispassionate teasing, he said, "Passably well. I'll have notes later."

He sighed with even greater relief when he felt Bucky take him back into his mouth. 

There was an odd motion below, just out of view. It took Thor a second to realize that it was Bucky touching himself, stroking himself in time with his hand's motions along the base of Thor's cock. Even as close to coming as he was, Thor quivered with the kind of lordly indignation he hadn't tapped into since Asgard.

"No, no," he ordered. "Unhand yourself. That is for me to take care of. Me alone."

Bucky had his mouth too full of cock to respond, but he groaned. Immediately, the movement stopped and he returned his metal hand to Thor's balls. It was thrilling, knowing how the smallest squeeze could probably crush them, but Bucky was being so gentle, little more than tickling. 

Bucky's refreshingly chilly fingers swiped through the spittle and precome that had leaked down to Thor's balls, gathered it up, and pushed it back, back until that deliciously ridged finger traced along Thor's hole. No one had touched him there since he was a stripling warrior. Memories of his youth rose up to the front of his mind. 

Thor looked down at the top of Bucky's angelic face, eyes closed. All this was only a prelude, he reminded himself. 

Too many confusingly exciting stimuli conquered him, and, faster than his pride generally allowed, he came, swearing loudly, into Bucky's mouth.

Bucky startled, but did not pull back. He continued working, slurping down the copious amounts of come that Thor, who had not touched himself in days, had been unwittingly saving. 

With that initial release over, Thor felt a return to himself. The unfamiliar and unpleasant haze of awkwardness that had overtaken him from the almost the moment Bucky had first entered suddenly cleared. The situation was too simple: Thor was in a comfortable room with an attractive partner who needed to be shown a good time. 

Thor could do this. He was phenomenal at this, among the best in the universe. And this was for Bucky, his dearest Bucky. He would have to perform at his peak level; Bucky deserved nothing less. Thor looked down at Bucky swallowing around him, newly resolute. 

"Come up here," Thor commanded. He dragged Bucky up by his metal arm, and then tackled him onto the bed, rolling him onto his back and looming over him.

Bucky's cock had left a large wet spot on the front of his underwear, likely from when he'd been pleasuring himself. Seeing it left Thor feeling aroused, despite having just come. He had never thought in-depth about doing this with Bucky before this evening. But, like all of his spur-of-the-moment plans, it was turning out rather well, he thought. 

"Let's get these off you," Thor growled playfully. 

Bucky seemed rather in a daze, lost in arousal. He only realized what Thor was doing until the briefs were halfway down his thighs. 

"Wait!" he started to say, sounding panicked, but Thor had already gotten them past his knees. He lifted Bucky's feet up into the air so he could remove them with a flourish. He tried prying Bucky's legs open so he could settle in between them, but Bucky became horribly shy, pressing his thighs together and covering his cock with his hand. 

"What's wrong?" Thor asked. 

"I... I can't. You..." Bucky struggled, but half-heartedly—less than that, even. It was plainly a struggle with himself, not with Thor.

"I told you. Whatever has occasioned this squeamishness, whatever Hydra did to you, it will not matter. Let me give you pleasure. I'm very good at this, you know. And inventive. And sympathetic."

"Modest, too." Bucky teased, but it was a tense tease. 

"And you would not want me to go into battle without you. You would not want Quill to take the glory of having fought beside me."

Thor's confident earnestness and well-chosen barbs seemed to be breaking through. Although lacking the enthusiastic joy Thor had grown accustomed to with previous lovers, Bucky gave in. He sighed and let his head loll to the side, looking away. Slowly, he opened his legs. At first, Thor failed to see what the matter was. A generously and well-proportioned cock, a perfectly formed sac that was currently tightened up on itself from arousal, all nestled in short, soft dark hair. Thor salivated and immediately went to stroke it, reaching around and between Bucky's fingers to make space for his own. 

Thor had forgotten the delight of a hard length in his hand, the satisfaction of watching a man's hard abdomen clench in desire, and the way nipples tightened against a hard chest. Bucky did not disappoint in displaying all of these reactions, even with his overly tense state. Thor strove to calm Bucky by reducing him to a quivering jelly. His index finger slipped through the precome around his balls. It all _was_ rather wetter than usual down here, Thor thought fleetingly, and…

"Oh!" he said.

Bucky shuddered when Thor trailed his fingers even farther, this time with purpose. A cunt, hairless and hidden behind Bucky's balls, welcomed him. Slippery and warm, it was the source of most of the moisture. It all but invited Thor's finger to trace around the rim. Bucky shuddered again, but not entirely with disgust. He still looked away, but his eyes fluttered shut and he bit his lip so hard that it began to turn white.

"Is this..." Thor was fairly certain that human men did not possess such blessings, and therefore... "Is this what you feared me despising?"

Bucky nodded, still looking away. Painfully, he explained, "They wanted more winter soldiers, but Zola's serum didn't work on any other subjects, and my sperm's sterile. So, they tried another angle. They were gonna keep going and make a whole womb, but they abandoned the project as soon as they got their hands on Howard's serum. And I was stuck like this." 

Even though he had just spent, Thor could feel his cock stirring again in anticipation, in want. A want for which he felt incredibly guilty when he heard the choked, sob-like noise at the end of Bucky's story. "You make it sound like a bad thing. But hard and wet all at once like this? All I see before me is a delectable feast."

"It isn't usually wet. That's just because you..." Bucky sighed and looked miserable, more miserable than he'd looked since leaving Earth. "I usually pretend it isn't there."

"You do not touch yourself?" Thor had known his friend to have brooding tendencies, but this was taking things too far. 

"I jerk my dick plenty. Our walls are too thin for you not to have heard me." 

"But you do not pleasure yourself here. Oh, Bucky." Since Bucky would not do it, Thor touched for him. He ran his fingers along Bucky's sopping opening, and then, unable to help himself, he raised the same fingers to his mouth and sucked the wetness onto his tongue.

"Jesus Christ," Bucky breathed, eyes wide and thighs trembling with want that not even he could convincingly deny.

"As sweet as the man it came from." Thor knew it was a line—a tired one, at that—but it was one that would work. Lines usually did, when they were true. Bucky _was_ delicious, in multiple ways, with his legs uncontrolledly splayed and his muscular chest heaving with every breath. That one taste made Thor hungry for more, and brought back pleasant memories of an episode from his youth that he had not had cause to reminisce on for a very long time.

Finally becoming convinced of Thor's obvious acceptance, Bucky started to engage as he always had with his friend. He finally looked Thor squarely in the eye, and asked, "You're really cool with this?" 

"Colder than cool. Bucky, you are a marvel! You will allow me to show you all the wonders available to you, won't you?" He wrapped his hand again around Bucky's length, softened due to Bucky's embarrassment, while continuing to play with his cunt with the other hand. 

Bucky squirmed in a strange combination of mortification and pleasure when Thor briefly dipped his index finger inside. "I thought we were going to, oh god, Thor. I thought we were going to fuck. We _have_ to fuck. But what I always wanted was…"

"What you always wanted was the way you would have fucked before this was done to you. I understood. I have not forgotten. You can have me, in any way that you want, I give you my word. But let me taste you first. A real taste, deep and full. I feel that I will go mad if I don't." And it was true. Thor hadn't known such a thing existed to want until a minute ago, but now he wanted to bury his face in Bucky's warm, wet cunt more than anything else in the world. 

Bucky stiffened at the words, the result of apparently long-held self-denial and self-loathing, but Thor was patient. He knew from previous instances that Bucky's reticence usually relaxed in the face of tenacious affection. He had never been able to deny Thor anything. Moreover, Bucky's body and its infinitely fascinating reactions—reactions that Thor now wished to memorize—told him that Bucky _was_ enjoying this, despite himself. The trembling muscles in his thighs, the furrow in his brow, the pouty part of his cock-swollen lips, the long-denied yearning in his eyes… If he truly did not want this, he would have thrust Thor away; such was the trust between them.

Still, Thor wanted to hear Bucky agree.

"I am not a begging man," he tried again, leaning over to stroke Bucky's flushed face with the hand not currently stroking Bucky back to hardness. In doing so, he smeared a bit of that shiny, tacky wetness on his face, a wetness that Thor wanted to lick, this time off Bucky's face, "but I will beg for you, if that is what you need."

Bucky's breathing became louder, shallower. He nodded slowly, and if the whispered, "Yeah, okay, if that makes you want… if that's how… okay," was softer than Thor would have preferred, it was at least clear and husky with desire. 

Lest Bucky change his mind, Thor lost no time in crawling between his increasingly spread thighs. Thor's cock, hard again and leaking into the sheets, felt squashed as he lay on his belly for the best access, but he didn't mind. A small, unimportant part of his brain remarked at the strangeness of this, of staring at Bucky's glorious cunt from a mere few inches away with every intention of slurping it down. But Thor silenced that pesky thought, for it had no business speaking up. Thor had been dealing with strangeness for much of his life; never before had the strange proven so utterly delightful. 

He had never been one for going slow. His tongue quickly sank right into Bucky's welcoming heat. 

"Gods, yes," he murmured directly into Bucky's entrance. Bucky tasted even better from the source. No, it was not only the salty-sweetness of his skin that thrilled Thor, but also the smooth viscosity of his drippings. His lips happily found Bucky's clit, which Thor had feared he might not be able to expect, given the origin of this modification.

He'd barely begun when Bucky gave a full-body tremble above him. 

"Goddamn, fuck," Bucky moaned. All the tension was draining out of him as he went boneless against Thor's persistent tongue. 

"It is good, is it not?" Thor said, taking a little pause to begin to push his littlest finger slowly, so slowly, inside, where it was practically swallowed. All he could think of was his cock in that place, but he would not ask, he could not ask… "Even better than having your cock sucked, I always thought. Better than anything. That combination of tickling and pressure and slipperiness. And with a few fingers inside while your clit is sucked. All producing the very strongest of orgasms. Gods, but I envy you."

At this, Bucky did manage to prop himself up on his elbows, even though his mouth hung open and his breath came noisily.

"You talk like…" he said with effort. "You talk like you know."

"Yes, have I never told you?" Thor answered, punctuating his thoughts with licks, and more, so that the tale took quite a long time to tell. "It was one of Loki's pranks. He discovered a spell for replacing one's parts. One day after a bath, I went to dry my cock, only to find it gone and replaced by a luscious cunt. As soon as I'd dressed myself, I chased him all over the palace, but he would not reverse the spell. Not even when I dangled him over the fermentation vats would he undo it. That was how I knew he was not lying when he said he _could not_ reverse it. It was the sort of spell whose only cure was time."

"Fuck," Bucky moaned, at quite a few junctures in the tale, but Thor could not tell which of his outbursts were driven by Thor's exceptional storytelling skills, or to his prowess with tongue and fingers. "How long?" 

"Oh, only a couple of weeks. But…" Thor smiled to himself, lost in the happy memory. He fingered Bucky a little more as he remembered, barely hearing—but still appreciating—the low moan that escaped his friend, a moan that sounded so much like his own in the memories. "I spent the majority of those two weeks in my room, feigning illness, and ravishing myself without cease. Never before nor since has my wrist ached so much. I could not let myself alone. After a couple of days, Loki, who knew me too well to believe me ill, climbed through the window into my room to see what I was doing in there."

"He caught you?" Bucky asked, aghast, and so distracted by the tale that he forgot his embarrassment. He remained propped up on his elbows, looking down through heavy-lidded eyes at Thor, and quivering with his whole body every time Thor teased along his clit. 

"He was so intrigued by the intensity of my pleasure—so much more intense than what I had so far learned to achieve with my cock. We were quite young at the time, you see. He ended up casting the spell on himself to see what all the fuss was about. And so we, ah, spent our so-called convalescence together, in my room. Rarely, I would wager, have two men practiced the art of eating a cunt as devotedly as we did. In later days, he became known, in giggles and whispers, as 'Silver Tongue'. But what they did not know was that he learned everything from me."

For the first time since they'd begun, all the lust drained from Bucky's expression and was replaced with shock. "You fucked Loki?"

"No, of course not. He was my brother! And again, neither of us had a cock at the time. No, we only pleasured each other with our mouths and fingers. We timed and judged who could bring the other to completion fastest and most devastatingly. We were locked in constant competition for the title of master of the art."

"So, you're saying Loki was better," Bucky said with a wry smile, but still with shock in his eyes. 

To punish him for being right, and because Thor remembered that he had better things to do right now than talk, he crooked the finger he had inside Bucky, in just the right spot to send Bucky's back arching. 

However, the high didn't seem to have moved Bucky off the subject. When he caught his breath again, he continued, "Still sounds like fucking to me. Jesus Christ, Thor." 

Thor had never thought about it like that, but now that Bucky had brought it up, he could somewhat understand what it looked like. 

"It meant nothing."

"Doesn't make it any less weird. But, hey, I'm not a space prince. What do I know?"

"You know that I understand what it is like to have a cunt between your legs. You know that I _loved_ it. Truly, if Loki's spell had allowed me to have both, as you do, I would have asked him to leave me like that forever."

Bucky squinted at him, head tilted and thoughtful. "You really mean that, don't you? You're not just trying to make me feel better."

"We agreed long ago that I shouldn't say things to try to make you feel better. It has never worked."

"No, it's always just ended up even worse." 

"So, you will believe me. You will let me show you?"

"Isn't that what you've been doing for the past ten minutes?"

"Bucky," Thor growled, low and with intent, "I have barely begun."

Bucky gulped audibly, but he nodded. He didn't seem capable of any more words than that, but it was all Thor needed. 

Thor resumed his attentions, this time with much more intensity. He sucked Bucky's clit in earnest, marveling at the strange sensation of a scrotum hitting his nose as he did so. He got two fingers inside Bucky now, and his tongue followed them as far as it could. Above him, Bucky kept gasping in pleasure and losing his balance, until, eventually, he gave up and stayed flat on the bed, writhing in sensation.

At one point, Bucky tried to stroke himself, but Thor swatted his hand away. 

"No, I want you to come on my tongue and fingers alone. I want you to know what this is like, without your cock having anything to do with it." 

It didn't take long until Bucky's gasps came faster and louder. However, as commanded, he kept his hands off his cock. One clutched the bedding, and the other—the metal one—crept tentatively into Thor's hair. Thor keened, not just because it meant that Bucky felt relaxed and in the moment enough to forget which hand he was using, but also because Thor loved the cool touch. He wanted Bucky to grab him by the hair, tug at it a little, demonstrate the passion that Thor was only just now realizing he craved. 

Whenever he paused to take a breath, he bent his head upwards to take a look at Bucky's face, which was becoming beautifully wrecked, hair brushing against his eyes and tangling in his lashes. 

Thor would make Bucky love this part of himself if it killed him. (But it would be nicer if it didn't kill him.)

"Thor! Fuck, Thor, fuck," Bucky began to babble, and that was when Thor unleashed the ultimate trick he had learned from Loki. With a flourish that he had had to practice on his brother many times before he got the knack of it, he prodded at the magical spot he had located inside Bucky along with the tenderest nips to his clit. Bucky came shouting, praying Thor's name like a hymn, and looking so gorgeous that Thor had to rub his hard cock more aggressively into the mattress to relieve some of the pressure. Thor would take what he could get, just for this one night, but...

"Fuck me, Thor. Will you fuck me? Like this?"

Thor would have wondered if he'd accidentally revealed his desires aloud if he hadn't been too out of breath to have spoken. 

Bucky was still hard, Thor noted. He continued to tremble with need. 

Thor sat up between Bucky's spread legs and absently stroked his cock. Slowly, he forced himself to say, "I thought you didn't want want..."

Bucky stared at him, eyes blown wide and brow furrowed in the prettiest picture of pleasure as he watched Thor's hand. "I want it, please, Thor. If you want me... I mean, if you want to." 

"I thought you didn't like it. I thought you didn't want..."

"I want it if it's with you. You'll make it feel good. You don't think I'm a freak. I'm never gonna trust anyone like this again. You're... Thor, fuck." He covered his face with his hands, as though suddenly mortified all over again. 

Thor gently pried Bucky's fingers off his face so that he could gaze into his eyes, and he stroked along Bucky's cheek to calm him down. "You are not a freak. You are wonderful and I want to very much. Gods, but you're beautiful," Thor said before he could stop himself. He still wasn't sure if he was allowed to say it, and increasingly, he began to fear that he should _not_ say it, given the circumstances. 

Luckily, it seemed like the right thing to say, because Bucky's face grew brighter, as though lit by happiness from within. In their years together, he thought he had learned most of Bucky's expressions, but in the past half hour, he had witnessed a few new ones. 

"Really?" Bucky whispered.

"You're ready. So wet. I could just..." He shifted his knees closer and hitched Bucky's strong thighs around his waist. He could feel his cock tickling against Bucky's slick opening, feel Bucky trembling in anticipation. "This might hurt. You are damnably tight." 

"Don't care."

Thor pushed in, slowly, knowing that he was so much bigger than the two fingers he had used along with his mouth. Perhaps he should have prepped Bucky more, but the selfish part of him, the part that had once been called a beserker, could not stop. And, judging by the way Bucky clenched and cried out, even despite his high pain thresholds, it _did_ hurt, even though Thor had only gotten a couple of inches in.

He immediately withdrew.

"I am sorry," he started to say, but Bucky shook his head.

"Don't stop. It's all right."

Taking his friend at his word, Thor tried again. This time, Bucky must have known what to expect, because he screwed his face into stillness and did not cry out. However, Thor knew him well enough to recognize the lack of breathing as a sign of strain. Unwilling to stop again, but hoping to calm Bucky, Thor leaned over him. As soon as he was far enough inside to no longer fear slipping out or losing his place, he rested his weight on Bucky and cradled his head between his hands. 

"Is this all right?" he asked through gritted teeth, because _Norns_ Bucky felt so good. So hot inside and so slippery yet almost unbearably tight. Made for Thor. Even though he was going very slowly, back and forth, not quite pulling out or pushing in all the way, he could feel Bucky clenching in surprise and shock around him, clenching _hard_ in ways that not only sent sparks running down the length of his cock, but also led him down the path of wondering if Bucky's arse would be even tighter, clench him even more possessively. He moaned at the thought.

"It's so much," Bucky wheezed. "So full."

"I know. And you're doing so well. Can you take more?"

Bucky nodded, and Thor pushed in all the way. Not hard, but firmly. Bucky cried out, in a yell that Thor was pleased to hear was composed of at least half pleasure. Thor pulled out and thrust back in, this time with more pressure, more force, testing the waters. Bucky cried out again, this time all pleasure. His eyes were bright and wide as they looked up at Thor. 

So much of Bucky was hard—hard muscle, hard cock, bones that it took extreme force to break, jawbone sharp as a sword—but he was soft in his cunt, and in the gaze half-hidden by his long hair. Thor’s heart felt full as he touched Bucky in his soft places, cock enveloped by Bucky’s smooth folds, his fingers sweeping the hair away to reveal Bucky's darkened eyes. 

The previously fleeting thought of kissing him returned, this time with tripled force. This time, it wasn't about "should" or "could". Thor _wanted_ to, just as desperately as he'd wanted to drink from Bucky's cunt a few minutes before. 

But that had no place here, he told himself again. He would not take advantage of the trust Bucky had shown in him. He would not do something that so clearly did not fit with the favor Bucky had asked of him. Bucky had never evinced any romantic interest in him. They were friends. Only friends. This was sex. Only sex. Thor would not let himself grow confused, no matter how beautiful Bucky was like this, no matter how dearly Thor had always loved him, no matter how kissable those lips were. 

To drive the thoughts from his head, he began to thrust harder, faster. He propped himself up again, both to put a safer distance between their mouths as well as to be able to fuck Bucky in earnest. This entire evening had been so odd, so full of unexpected developments, that only now did Thor remember who Bucky was. _What_ Bucky was: one of the few people he'd ever met who could take everything Thor had to give. He was someone with whom Thor did not have to hold back. 

And so, Thor fucked him, thoroughly, losing himself in it, in the feeling of hitting home—a true home—again and again. He lost himself in the _sounds_ Bucky made beneath him, in the way Bucky seemed to be loving it, in the way Thor loved him, in the way…

 _Oh shit_ , Thor thought vaguely to himself even though the haze of his lust.

Bucky essayed to speak, stammering hesitantly, and only getting out one or two words at a time between moans. "I know this isn't… I know you don't…" 

"What is it? Tell me what you want. I will give you anything."

"Can you kiss me?" Bucky gasped, barely intelligibly.

The words had barely escaped Bucky's lips when Thor all but swallowed them. They kissed ravenously, desperately, like possessed things. Thor kissed hard enough to drive the potentially-disastrous revelation he'd been on the cusp of facing out of his mind, at least for the moment. Thor gasped into Bucky's mouth at the sensation of having his hair pulled and his mouth attacked and his cock squeezed. Bucky thrust back, too, giving as good as he got it. 

No one had ever gotten this rough with Thor, especially not when he was the one doing the fucking. Almost no one else _could_. Thor found that he loved it, wanted to drown in it, never wanted it to stop. 

But it eventually did stop, as all things must. Almost as soon as Thor slipped his tongue into Bucky's hot, eager mouth, he felt rather than heard the groan beneath him. Bucky's knees fell even more helplessly to each side as he arched. He squeezed Thor's arse with his metal hand, keeping them plastered to one another, from their faces down to their groins. Soon, spurts of hot seed further slicked the slide of their sweaty bellies. Thor continued to kiss Bucky through his orgasm, longer and more violent than the last, for all that his cock hadn't even been touched. Thor followed quickly after, but he continued to kiss Bucky all through it. Now that they had both come, they had no reason to keep kissing, and yet the idea of breaking their momentum was unfathomable. 

"Can't," Bucky gasped between kisses. He continued to quiver with the full-body spasms that Thor remembered as one of the delicious results of coming vaginally. "Can't stop coming."

In the big bed, they rolled over, first onto their sides, then onto Thor's back, with Bucky's still spurting cock still trapped between them, then back to Thor on top. All the while rutting weakly and fruitlessly against one another, taking small breaths in the milliseconds between moving from kissing a bottom lip to a top, and vice versa. At some point, Thor's cock softened and slipped out of Bucky, and yet still he couldn't bear to stop. He kept the kisses going, pretending to be too swept up in the moment to notice that they'd stopped fucking, or to care. No, he _was_ too swept up in the moment to care. Or rather, he finally accepted, with momentous explosiveness, as Bucky worried at his lower lip and squeezed his arse, that he wanted Bucky beyond this arrangement. He'd always adored him, but tonight, that comfortable, trusting affection had merged with desire, in an alchemical reaction that Thor had never hitherto experienced, but which might have been love.

And then Bucky moaned Thor's name again, spurted one more time while humping Thor's hip, and that 'might' changed into a 'definitely'.

Even passion had its limits, and Thor could not continue to maintain plausible deniability about why he was kissing Bucky. He became aware of the tangles in his hair, of cold wet patches all over the sheets, of a cramp in his calf. Bucky's mouth had not lost its inviting irresistibility, but the moment was slipping away, and Thor did not think he had the right to continue. He needed to pull himself together and find a way to control these feelings.

They disentangled their legs and fell side by side onto their backs, panting. 

Neither of them spoke for some time, but they had the excuse of needing to catch their breath. 

Thor's heart swelled in his breast when the first word Bucky eventually uttered was, "Wow."

Thor didn't trust himself to turn his head and look at Bucky, so he continued to stare at the ceiling when he asked, "So, you liked it?"

"There's no lake here. Don't fish."

Thor felt his face crack into a relieved grin, since joking was a good sign that things had not disastrously changed between them. "Well, I am always happy to serve."

They were silent again for a few minutes, but it was a companionable silence. Bucky's vaginal juices began to dry on Thor's cock, which made for an odd feeling when the air ventilation breezed cool air across it. 

Bucky was the one to move first, after a whispered, "Gross." 

"What?"

"I'm covered in come, and other stuff, you know. And I've, um, got yours running down my ass crack."

Thor almost choked at that. He could look, and see for himself, but didn't trust himself. So, instead he continued to lie there and imagine it while Bucky eased himself gingerly out of the bed. 

"Want me to wet a rag or something for you? For…" Bucky gestured vaguely at Thor's cock and at his stomach, where sweat and Bucky's come were beginning to crust together.

"No, I'll join you," Thor said quickly, and then kicked himself, because perhaps Bucky had wanted a private moment to collect himself after everything that had just happened. Too late did he remember how momentous that must have been for him, not only a virgin, but also getting fucked in a part of himself that he'd resented for so long.

To Thor's relief, Bucky did not seem annoyed. "Okay," he said, with not even a hint of reluctance or resignation in his tone.

The bathroom lights were much brighter than the setting at which Thor kept the main suite. They both winced as they entered, and then winced again when they caught sight of themselves in the mirror. They looked a wreck, both of them. Bucky's previously fluffy hair had grown matted with sweat, and splayed in odd directions around his face, and his nipples were still hard, biteable nubs. His metal fingers kept up a minuscule rhythmic tension that Thor had never seen before. Thor was an equally sorry sight. His beard had tangled with slick from Bucky's cunt and his face had gone slightly splotchy from exertion—more exertion than he'd expended in most battles. 

But they were both glowing. Their lips both looked well-kissed. They both looked happy and sated. Their faces were both open. Thor saw that his was perhaps a little _too_ open, and endeavored to control it. 

He knew himself, without a doubt now, to be in trouble. Because he longed, from his heart, not only his cock.

The concept of towels was unknown in this corner of the universe, but Bucky plucked two strips of decorative green cloth from the ceiling and wet them in the basin. He handed one to Thor, and proceeded to wipe his stomach and groin with the other. 

Thor tried not to look at what Bucky was doing, but couldn't help himself. Once, he caught Bucky doing the same. They both looked away quickly, frowned, and then looked back at each other before laughing a little.

"This is ridiculous," Bucky said with an odd mixture of cheerfulness and frustration.

"It is," Thor agreed, without quite knowing which exactly, out of all the potential reasons, Bucky found ridiculous. 

At least Bucky didn't seem to be harboring any discomfort about the kissing that had gone on entirely too long. Just thinking about it was making Thor's cock twitch again. He knew this was not the time for it, but the more he tried to hide his body's reaction with the cloth, the worse the situation became. 

A glance in the mirror showed him that Bucky was busy looking down as he cleaned between his legs. He was also not quite as soft as he had been when they'd entered the bathroom. Thor knew it probably mean nothing, but he was nothing if not courageous and optimistic. 

"Our project is likely not yet complete," he ventured, not only because he wanted more, but also because he knew in his bones that he was right. Part of him felt guilty for knowing that they _had_ to do more, for looking forward to it.

"What do you mean?"

"Magic uses odd rules, very rigid yet unexpected. Loki always reminded me of this. The wards that keep out virgins might not be satisfied with the act we just performed."

"Oh, you mean because I wasn't born like this?"

Thor shook his head. "No, magic works with more intent than that. If you had asked for such a modification—if you had wanted it—I believe the magic would have accepted it. However, the concern is that you did not ask for it. It was violently forced upon you. You have always rejected it. You loathe it."

"I'm currently rethinking the 'loathing'," Bucky said with a hint of a smile. "Something I never thought I'd say."

Thor's heart flipped again, but he pressed forward. "I am glad to hear it. But the other concerns remain. What we did might not be enough. We have come this far. It would be a shame to let any possibility remain of you finding yourself shut out tomorrow at the key moment."

"Yeah, that would be pretty embarrassing," Bucky agreed slowly. He kept glancing shyly at Thor's reflection in front of him, and then at his own feet. 

Thor cleared his throat. "Earlier, you expressed an interest in penetrating me."

Bucky rocked his head from side to side. "I said that mostly because… I had this crazy idea that maybe I could fuck you from behind, and you wouldn't see. That we'd be able to do it without you seeing me or finding out. Get straight to it and get it over with. It was a bad idea, though. Now I see that it wouldn't have worked. Or if it had, it probably wouldn't have been very good. That… what we did just now wasn't how I'd thought it would go. And it wasn't anything I ever thought I'd want or like, but… It was good."

"What you describe would have been lackluster indeed, not nearly what I would wish for you as a first time. I never thought I would be glad that one of your plans fell apart, but for this one, I am." Thor risked a smile, which grew wider with each passing millisecond, especially when it was mirrored by Bucky's similarly slow-growing one. 

"You really didn't mind it?"

"I will keep repeating myself until you believe me," Thor said. 

"You haven't actually said whether it was good for _you_ , so you're not repeating anything."

Thor thought back, and he supposed he hadn't said anything to that effect; he needed to rectify that immediately. "That might have been the best fuck I've ever had," he said, and found that he meant it. 

Bucky rolled his eyes. "Don't need to lay it on _that_ thick. Just saying 'it was pretty good' would be enough."

"I'm not exaggerating."

Bucky must not have believed him, or could not believe him, because he changed the subject. "If we go again, do you think it makes a difference which one of us is on top?"

"No. And it makes no difference to me either. All that matters is what would bring _you_ satisfaction."

Bucky looked at Thor through the mirror instead of directly at him. But at least he was no longer looking at his feet. He sounded certain and more confident when he said, "Then, if it's all the same to you and to the magic, could you… You could fuck me again. The other way, I mean." 

"Are you sure?"

"Fucking you sounds good, too, don't get me wrong. Real good. But this… It's what I wanted back in the war. Still do. I saw two guys doing it once, in an alley back in Brooklyn. They didn't see me, but I watched. I wanted it, I wanted it all, but I kept staring at the guy who was getting fucked more. Never forgot it."

"You wished you were him. You've been more curious ever since."

Bucky nodded. "Maybe less curious than I was an hour ago. I mean, I just got fucked, but it's probably not the same."

"I cannot speak from experience, but I doubt it is the same. I look forward to hearing your comparisons."

"Is that a yes?"

"It is, indeed."

Thor had, at some point in the conversation, though when, he could not say, unconsciously transitioned from 'wiping' himself to 'stroking'. Bucky had done the same. They were now both halfway hard again, both a little bit bashful, but still glowing. 

Thor ached with how much he loved Bucky, and with bafflement at how he had failed to see it before now. He ached with uncertainty about what to do with this revelation.

"This should be weird, right?" Bucky asked. "You and me, and this. It should feel weird."

"And yet it doesn't."

"That almost makes it weirder."

Thor had no safe answer to that, so he began rooting around in the guest bag in the corner of the bathroom. It contained all sorts of essentials, from deodorizing sprays perfumes, from disinfectants to scale ointment, from degreasing fluids to fangbrushes. In the same compartment containing prophylactics of all shapes and sizes, he found a tube of lubricant. It was of a consistency that had been proven to work on the widest variety of species possible, while remaining effective for all. 

"Shall we?" Thor asked, holding up the lubricant. 

They were quiet and serious as they walked back to the bed, but not awkward. 

"How do you want me?" Bucky asked.

 _Any way I can have you_ , Thor thought. But what he said was, "On your back would be best, at least to start. I'll need to work you up to it."

As he crawled backwards on hands and feet on the bed, Bucky stared wonderingly at Thor's cock, which had curved up to tap against his belly again.

"You were right. It _does_ get even bigger." He lay himself down, head nestled between two pillows. He shifted this way and that under Thor's gaze, looking for a comfortable position. "What's wrong?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're looking at me funny."

Thor shut his eyes and shook his head, hoping to dislodge the rising emotion Bucky must have caught but been unable to parse. "No, I'm not," he said when he opened them again. 

"Then, get over here."

The uncertainty was back. They had kissed before, but that had been at the very height of the delirium of lust, when excuses could be made. Now they had gone back to the start, and Thor did not think he had the right. He touched the tops of Bucky's strong thighs as a request for them to part. Settling himself between them again felt like coming home, more comfortable than only the second time doing so should have felt. 

Bucky was looking up at him with a fond expression.

"What is it?" Thor was now the one to ask. He breathed the words into Bucky's cunt, which was starting to moisten again, simply from the nearness of Thor's mouth. 

"Nothing."

Bucky's cock swayed tantalizing in front of Thor's face. But this was not about what Thor wanted; this was about getting Bucky loose enough to take Thor's considerable girth. This was about satisfying the spell, he reminded himself. 

He began by licking Bucky's cunt again, falling in love all over again with the scent, before moving his head up slightly to mouth at Bucky's tight sac. He took first the right ball between his lips, and then the left, enjoying the weight of them before moving on to lick up Bucky's cock and take it all into his mouth.

"Thor," Bucky moaned, and Thor didn't think his name had ever sounded so pleasant. 

Thor continued to bob, very pointedly, up and down Bucky's cock, while also squeezing some of the lubricant onto his fingers. He kept his movements very circumspect so that Bucky wouldn't notice and tense up in anticipation or nerves.

"Is this also a first?" Thor asked conversationally. "Being sucked?" 

Bucky shook his head, and it took him a few breathless tries before he replied, "There were a couple of times, but it was always dark. Rushed. Not as nice as this." 

"I don't know whether or not to be glad to hear it."

"Doesn't matter. It's good now. Thank you, by the way. I haven't said that yet."

"You don't need to thank me."

"Sure, I do." 

"I'd prefer you didn't," Thor said, a little too honestly, a little too forcefully, and hopefully not too revealingly. Because to be thanked was a reminder that, to Bucky, this was nothing but a favor, a prerequisite to be checked off in order to help Thor with something else. It wasn't real.

Thor resumed sucking Bucky's cock. Meanwhile, he dipped the fingers of his other into Bucky's cunt, adding to the slick from the bottle, and then trailed them down down down to circle his other hole. 

It was obvious from the way Bucky shook and tensed and sighed that, whatever had happened with Peter during the war, they had never gotten this far. 

Which also meant no one had ever tasted Bucky here either. Thor could not resist. 

"What are you doing?" Bucky gasped when he felt Thor's tongue move from his cock to his hole, licking around the fingers that prodded without quite pushing in. 

Thor assumed the question to be rhetorical; he was almost certain he had heard Bucky using Shuri's communicator to access Earth pornography. Bucky had to know this was a thing that was done. 

Bucky tasted good here, too. Not as sweet as elsewhere, but still unnervingly like home. Thor could taste hints of the flavors from the bath, as well as something bitter that he slowly realized had to be remnants of Thor's own come, which, without a proper bath, had been difficult to eradicate fully from Bucky's undercarriage. 

"I have never kissed anyone here," Thor said just before dipping his tongue inside. "A first for me, too."

"Fuck," Bucky whispered, and Thor took that as encouragement to begin slipping a single finger slowly inside, alongside his tongue. 

There were almost too many options for what to do next. Thor took advantage of them all. He licked around his disappearing finger a little more, then buried his face deep into Bucky's cunt, then took Bucky's cock into his mouth. He varied his movements and his target until Bucky began falling apart. Although less powerful than his previous ones, Bucky's cunt eventually spasmed in orgasm, accompanied by the most beautiful cry of Thor's name yet.

Throughout all this, one finger had become two, and two had become three, until Bucky was pressing down on Thor's fingers with all the weight he could summon while horizontal. Thor decided Bucky was almost ready for his cock. But first, he was definitely ready for something else.

He sucked, _hard_ on Bucky's clit and crooked one of his fingers just so, at the spot inside his arse that, after careful exploration, he felt almost certain was the right one to make Bucky see stars.

Judging from Bucky's reaction, he struck true. Bucky all but flew off the bed. The only thing that kept him grounded was how he grabbed Thor's head with both hands, pulling him closer, pulling him _in_ , practically suffocating him in his glorious wetness. Thor let Bucky cling to his head for as long as he needed to calm down again.

"Thor, Thor, Thor, I… Thor," Bucky repeated. "Please."

"What do you need, Bucky? Tell me."

"You, just you. Please."

Thor could not hold back any more. His cock throbbed and his heart threatened to jump outside his chest. His entire being wanted to lose itself in Bucky—in his arse, in his cunt, in his mouth, in his presence, in everything that claimed to be 'Bucky'. He sat on his heels and dragged Bucky by the waist down the bed, right onto his cock. There was no preamble, no teasing. He had teased enough. 

He had prepped Bucky as much as he'd been able, but Thor was never going to go in easily, not with anyone. Even with four fingers, saliva, copious amounts of lubricant, and Bucky's own drippings, Bucky was _tight_. Tight like a vise. For all that he'd said he had longed for this, he didn't look like he was breathing. His face scrunched in pain.

Thor did not pull out—he had barely pushed far enough to be called 'in'—but he did stop. It occurred to him now, looking down at Bucky splayed out before him, that he had not sufficiently touched him. All those quivering muscles, the lovely line down the center of his abdomen, that long line of throat. Thor reached below Bucky's balls to rub at his clit, just enough to distract from the sensation of Thor's cock spearing him. Then he moved his now-moistened fingers to roll the nub of first one of Bucky's nipples, and then the other. Bucky's eyes remained tightly shut, but his mouth opened in a silent signal of pleasure. 

Thor pushed in two more inches. 

"Talk to me," he said, as a roundabout way of ensuring that Bucky started breathing again. "Tell me what you feel. Tell me everything."

"Hard. Feels hard, Thor," Bucky panted with effort. "Really big."

Thor trailed sticky fingers down Bucky's sides, caressing, tickling, savoring, drawing invisible patterns. He bit his lip in arousal when he pushed in a little bit more. "What else?" 

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut. "More lube?"

Thor rushed to grab the tube. He pulled out a little, just enough to apply more around Bucky's hole and slather his cock even more. When he felt that they were practically swimming in the stuff, he pushed back in, this time the entire way, in one smooth, determined movement. 

Bucky sounded strangled, but by now, Thor had seen enough to recognize the edge of pleasure in his noises. He picked up one of Bucky's feet from where it was planted in the sheets, and lifted it to throw it over his shoulder, opening him wider. Thor turned slightly to kiss the top of Bucky's foot, where it rested next to his face.

"You are taking it beautifully. Tell me how you feel, Bucky. Keep talking to me."

"Can't," Bucky said, eyes still squeezed shut, but he opened them when Thor cupped the back of his neck and began caressing his throat with a tender thumb. "It's better now. Starting to feel good. I think."

"I am going to move now. And then you will tell me how it compares to the other way."

Bucky nodded. He sobbed when Thor pulled out, and sobbed again when he pushed back in. A single tear of strain gathered at the corner of each of his eyes, but he seemed to be relaxing into it. 

"'s good. Real good, so… Thor," Bucky cried out when Thor experimented with pushing a little harder, with changing the angle and hitting what he thought was the right spot. 

Thor smiled when Bucky arched off the bed. 

"Better," Bucky whispered, sounding awed and surprised. "I like this way better."

"Is this what you've been longing for? Is this what you've craved?"

Bucky gave a half-aborted laugh that turned into a gasp when Thor pushed in again. "You've got no idea, pal."

Thor couldn't help but press a simple, sweet, chaste kiss to Bucky's forehead. The full-body shudder he felt Bucky give in response might have been more gratifying than any scream he'd ever elicited from a partner. 

Thor threaded his fingers with Bucky's metal ones, pulling their joined hands up above Bucky's head and bringing their faces closer together. "Can you take more?" he asked.

"Yeah. I want… I want to. It. Everything." Bucky stared up at him, from entirely too close, blue eyes sparkling, before suddenly lifting his head and catching Thor's lips between his own. He gave his own chaste kiss before collapsing again.

Thor watched him lick his lips, tasting himself in Thor's mouth. Bucky groaned, hot and open-mouthed.

"You are going to kill me," Thor said.

"Nah," Bucky said, still with effort, and this time with a wriggle of his hips, tentatively coming up to meet Thor's thrusts. "That would take more than I've got."

"You wouldn't say that if you could see yourself." Thor got an idea. "Let me show you." 

He pulled out, leaving Bucky moaning at the sudden emptiness, and began looking for the remote control. 

"What…" Bucky began to ask.

Thor found the button that turned all the walls into mirrors. Then he gathered Bucky in his arms and pulled him to sit in his lap at the edge of the bed. Bucky's legs spread wide, falling over Thor's thighs, and his feet hovered just an inch above the floor. Thor pressed his chest to Bucky's back and held him tightly around the waist.

"I want you to see," Thor explained. "I want you to see what you look like when you fuck. Once you see, you will never again feel shy."

It was awkward, but he lifted Bucky just enough to get his cock inside him again. They both swore when Thor was fully inside him again. Like this, Bucky was fully on display, as was the place where they were joined. Thor did not have a full range of motion, but they soon figured out a rhythm so that they rocked just enough to feel it. Thor wrapped his arms around Bucky's chest, holding him steady, touching him all over, pinching his nipples, smattering kisses across his back, mouthing at the place where his arm joined his body. 

"Do you see?" he asked. 

Bucky nodded, but he wasn't looking at himself. He was gazing into the reflection of Thor's eyes, just barely visible above Bucky's shoulder. He took Thor's hand from where it had been toying with his nipple and moved it down to his cock.

"Please," he said, but it sounded like pleading. 

Bucky had gone soft when Thor first entered him, but Thor's touches soon had him hard and leaking again. Thor kept kissing whatever parts of Bucky his lips could reach, kept stroking him, dipping down to his cunt every so often to gather slick to smooth the way.

Bucky kept tilting his head down and around, trying to nip at Thor's lips, but the position was too awkward. Since Bucky wasn't looking at himself anyway, and they couldn't fuck as hard as Thor wanted in this position, Thor let Bucky reposition them. Soon, he found himself on his back, with Bucky riding him and leaning down towards his face. 

"I think I like being kissed when I come," Bucky confessed, a little sheepishly. "If that's okay."

"It is very much okay."

This time, the kiss began slowly, innocence in stark contrast to the wet slapping noises of Bucky's arse hitting Thor's groin. Thor grasped Bucky passionately by the neck and by the back of his head. He kissed as though Bucky were a precious, breakable relic. 

"I'm close," Bucky said into Thor's mouth. "I'm so close. It's so good. Didn't know I could have this."

Bucky's words only made Thor want to give him more, give him _everything_. Losing himself again, he rolled them over and fucked him harder. He all but growled as he felt Bucky's breath begin to hitch into his mouth and his hole begin to clench even more tightly around Thor's cock. 

"Come for me. Let me feel it," Thor said between frantic kisses.

It took another few seconds, but soon Bucky was gripping Thor's shoulder, _hard_. Thor did not bruise easily, but Bucky's metal fingers promised to do it. And then Bucky's writhing hitched and stilled. Thor felt Bucky's spend all but pour all over his stomach, and he felt a gush of wetness from Bucky's cunt press into the hair around Thor's cock. Bucky seemed too overcome to keep kissing, and instead just let Thor mouth at his face as he, too, spent, again, inside his friend.

This time, Thor's head and heart succumbed to confusion (or worse, the opposite of confusion) too decidedly to continue a ruse of sweeping passion. Their kisses fizzled out shortly after they'd both come, and he could not find a natural-seeming way to continue. Neither did he want to. He knew now, too well, what he felt. To pretend anything else would be an insult to them both. 

Thor shifted enough to slip out of Bucky and disentangle their limbs. Thor caught his breath fairly quickly, but he stared at the ceiling while he attempted to corral his emotions.

He failed.

However, his courage, and, more importantly, his perspicacity had returned. It had been years, yes, but centuries worth of experience are not unlearned in a mere decade. Thor had enjoyed enough attentions to learn how to separate lust from convenience from real feelings. The third was something Thor had almost always run from. He'd always pretended not to see it on the occasions when a dalliance meant more to his partner than it did to him.

But tonight… tonight he wanted to see it. And he thought he had, if only for a second, in the reflection of Bucky's gaze through the mirror. The way he had looked at Thor, instead of himself… there had been something dark and longing in his eyes. Thor had seen that before. Not only directed at himself, but also between other people whom he had known to have deeper feelings than lust.

Anyone else would have deliberated, but Thor had always jumped before ruminating.

"Bucky," he began. 

But Bucky had already gotten up and begun to gather his clothes. 

"What are you doing?" Thor asked, thrown off track.

"Heading back to my room. It's late." He already had his shirt on again, and had one leg in his trousers. He was looking at the floor, at his clothes—anywhere but at Thor.

"I had thought you might stay," Thor said. 

"What for? You need to talk through the plan for tomorrow?" Bucky's tone implied that it was the last thing he wanted to do.

"No. It's simply that people often stay, and hold one another, after they have—"

"Yeah, but this isn't like that."

"Isn't it?" Thor asked, with meaning.

"What's that supposed to mean?" 

Thor could feel the moment slipping away from him with each garment that Bucky donned. He had already stuffed his underwear and socks into his pockets and was shimmying a foot into a boot.

Thor tried again. "I thought for a moment that perhaps you had enjoyed it."

"I think it was pretty clear I enjoyed it," Bucky mumbled. "I was going to say thanks, again, but you told me before that you didn't want me to."

"What I meant was that you seemed to have enjoyed it on more than a carnal level. I wondered if, perhaps, before tonight, you had wanted—"

Bucky cut him off again. This time he looked Thor in the eye, steady as ever, even as panic lurked behind his heavy-lidded eyes. "I didn't come here tonight expecting or hoping you'd offer to—"

"I know you didn't. And that is not what I am asking."

By now, Bucky had fully dressed himself and cracked the door open. "I'll see you in the morning, yeah? In the lobby with the others." 

He left without waiting for a response. 

Thor was left alone in the bed, completely nude, covered in come and slick. 

Somewhere, somehow, they had managed to 'make it weird'.

Thor fell back against the pillows and sighed.

* * *

Thor had not paid much attention during his lessons on Mythological Geography as a child, but the tale of Einlorenheim had been one of the few nuggets that had stayed with him. The tales of its honey-flavored rivers had appealed to his then sweet-tooth. He had listened with ever-eager ears about its fertile fields and magical fauna. He had dreamed one day of finding the long-lost coordinates and proving his worth by battling all the booby-traps and impediments that had kept nosy outsiders from exploring or settling on its legendary lands.

That day had come, but it turned out, as it so often had in the past few years, that Thor's worth alone was not enough. 

A not insignificant part of their success so far was due to the contributions of Mantis and Nebula. It turned out that the ancient hypnotizer Thor had boasted about 'liberating' had in fact been a worthless piece of garbage. When it failed to work, the group was left open to attacks from the lake-dwelling goblins that protected the ring surrounding the habitable part of Einlorenheim. However, Mantis was able to lull the goblins into a peaceful state while Nebula slew them with her bare hands. Her metal parts proved impervious to the poisons they excreted as they died. 

Thor didn't quite understand how they'd done it, but he was eminently grateful. Especially since he had been quite close to leaving without them. Mantis and Nebula had been very late to the pre-departure group breakfast and final briefing that morning in the hotel. They had appeared, later, at the dock just as Thor was about to take off. They had both looked sheepish, and a little disheveled, but assured everyone that they were committed to the project.

Thor did not know what had passed between them, but given the shy glances they shared when they thought no one was looking, he could guess.

If only he were sharing such glances with Bucky. 

Bucky evinced no obvious awkwardness—nothing that the others would sense. As the group picked their way through the dangerous landscape, he spoke and joked and strategized with Thor as though nothing were wrong. But he kept successfully eluding all of Thor's attempts to get him alone. He spent most of the journey conversing with Quill about boring Earth things. And then, once they'd gotten closer to their destination, he'd cajoled Rocket into helping him amplify the ship's thrusters in order to pierce through the magical barrier that rendered Einlorenheim invisible to all—all except those, like Thor, who knew exactly where it lay. 

Even once they'd landed, on the desolate wasteland near the far edge of the planet (a flat planet, like Asgard had been), he had stuck close to Gamora, whom, Thor had forgotten in the year since they'd last partnered with the Guardians, had always been Bucky's favorite of the group. Something about her being out of her universe and Bucky still feeling a bit out of time had led to a bond. 

Bucky hadn't even looked at Thor when they crossed the field that had been the reason anything had happened between them the previous night. 

The blindfolded climb up the cliff-face was the last of the challenges. Or so Thor had thought.

He ripped his blindfold off when he felt himself reach solid, flat ground again. He checked to ensure that the entire group had made it safely. Bucky and Quill had already made it to the top and were lending a hand to Gamora (Gamora rejected Quill, as usual, in favor of grasping Bucky's solid metal arm). Groot, with Rocket perched on his shoulder, was only a couple of feet behind them, as were Nebula, Drax, and Mantis. 

Confident that they had succeeded, Thor turned around to see where they had ended up. He expected to see beautiful fields rolling in front of him. Instead, he saw an endless silver wall, a hundred feet high. The only entrance was a forbidding, black panel nearby. A door, or a gate; Thor couldn't quite make out.

"I thought the cliff was the last one," Gamora said.

"The legends did not speak of anything further," Thor replied. 

"Let's go see what the deal is," Bucky said. He was already off, taking long strides towards the gate. 

The rest of them followed. When they got closer, Thor saw a golden square engraved into the black panel. Below it was a plaque.

Quill bent down and began to read. "Only to those whose hearts join in purest love will the walls Einlorenheim open. Join on the stone and watch paradise open."

"What kind of cheesy shit is that supposed to mean?" Rocket asked with a sneer.

Quill was looking hopefully at Gamora.

"Absolutely not," she said.

"I am Groot?" 

"No, Groot," Nebula said. "Friendship is not enough."

"Well, that sounds like a lot of trouble for nothing," Rocket said next. "You people are all right and everything, but none of us feel that way about one another."

Thor had barely been listening to them. This was _his_ challenge, he now saw. His moment for courage of the most extreme sort. If he was wrong, he would look an awful fool. He would be mortified beyond all reckoning. Quill would never let him live it down. But even worse than that, he would have jeopardized a precious friendship in the process. 

But given Bucky's manner today, perhaps it was too late. Perhaps it had already been jeopardized. In that case, at least Thor would be able to know for certain, and tear off the bandage. 

He stepped forward.

"What are you doing?" Nebula asked.

Instead of answering, Thor looked meaningfully at Bucky. He willed Bucky to make eye contact, and once he'd secured that eye contact, Thor poured all of his heart into his gaze. He had always been better at action than at words; he hoped that this, now, would convey what he had been too slow and tongue-tied to express the night before. 

He pressed his hand against the gold plate. 

Bucky's eyes grew wide as he understood what Thor was trying to say. 

"Really?" he asked.

Thor did not trust himself to speak. He could only nod. 

That seemed to be enough for Bucky, who walked up to the wall, too, and placed his hand on top of Thor's. 

Beneath their hands, Thor felt the plate begin to quiver, and seconds later, the entire section of the wall. With a pulse, the panel melted away into nothing, leaving a wide doorway.

"I didn't see _that_ coming," Quill muttered behind them.

"I did," Mantis replied dreamily. 

"How?" Rocket asked.

"I accidentally collided into Bucky last time we all worked together," Mantis explained. "I felt what he felt. I am so happy now."

"This is cute and all," Rocket interrupted. "But how about we start looking for this treasure you promised?"

The others passed through the opening, leaving Thor and Bucky at the back of the group, still looking at one another. Their hands were remained joined in mid-air, where the plate had been.

"The last time we all worked together was a year and a half ago," Thor said. The question was implicit.

Bucky shrugged. "It's been coming on since before we left Earth."

"You can't be serious."

"Yours wasn't the only offer to go to space that I got. But it was the most, uh, attractive."

"How did I never notice?" Thor asked, anguished. The entire past three years had now been thrown into confusion, with every memory now taking on a not-unpleasant additional layer. He could not believe he had been so blind. Again. No one but Loki had ever been able to hide something this big from him, for so long.

"I'm a trained sniper and spy. I'm good at keeping shit under wraps. What about you? Just last night, you told me you'd never thought about me like that. It didn't feel like a lie."

"My feelings experienced something of an avalanche about twenty minutes after I said that," Thor admitted. "I tried to tell you, but you ran."

"I was scared you'd seen. There were a few moments there where I didn't think I managed to keep what I felt under wraps."

"I did see," Thor said with a smile. "I am most observant, you know."

Thor's arm had begun to tire, and he realized that they looked rather stupid. He lowered their hands, but did not let go. Nodding at the others, he indicated that they should progress. They walked, hand in hand, through the doorway, which closed behind him. 

As soon as they were through, Bucky pulled them to a halt, and pulled Thor close to him. They immediately wrapped their arms around each other and kissed. This time, there was no need for an excuse or a ruse. Thor could give into it as he'd wanted to the night before. 

When they came up for air, they stopped to look around them. For all that they had worked so hard and for so long to get here, they had, until this moment, been distracted. But they were not disappointed. Einlorenheim, with its pink creeks and snow-capped mountains descending into green and yellow fields, was as beautiful and wonderful as all the legends Thor had heard. 

"We finally did it," Bucky said.

"We did. I have only to perform the rites at the abandoned temple, and I will be able to claim it for Asgard," Thor said.

"Then let's go find this temple."

They jogged, still holding hands, to catch up with the others. 

"Still not seeing any treasure," Quill griped. 

"Is my miraculous survival not treasure enough?" called a voice from above behind them. A thrilling voice. The most familiar voice in the world, though it had been eight years since Thor had heard it. 

Thor spun around and saw Loki and Heimdall standing at the top of the wall, in a little observation station that had not been visible from outside.

"Impossible," Thor whispered. But he ran back all the same. 

The walls were high, but they had always been of hardy stock. Loki jumped and landed on the ground in front of Thor as elegantly as anyone could have managed. He wore his full regalia and looked in good health—even better than the day before Thanos had taken the Statesman.

"You didn't _really_ think I would stay dead, did you?" Loki wheezed from inside Thor's suffocating embrace. "My dear brother, will you never learn? You shall never be rid of me."

Thor took a step back, holding Loki's shoulder's tightly, as though he might vanish yet again. _"How?"_

"It was Banner," Heimdall said. He had also jumped down to join them. "When he reversed Thanos's evil, he reached a little too far. In his mind, probably because he knew us so well, the slaughter of the Asgardians was part and parcel of the same act. When he brought half the universe, he brought us back as well."

"Thankfully, the ship itself counted as 'Asgard' in Banner's mind," Loki explained. "It would have been awkward to find ourselves drifting in airless space." 

"And you came here?" Thor asked.

Loki's smile was small and fond and only moderately sly. More earnest than usual, he said, "Mythological Geography was my favorite subject, too. It seems that we had the same idea, brother. This might be a first."

"They are all here? The half of our people that was lost?"

"They are. And they thrive. We're even putting on a play this evening."

"And the land has not rejected them?"

"I did the legendary temple rites myself, brother. It is a funny turn of events, is it not, that Asgard's home and people are now bound together, by _me_."

"I look forward to the day when you bring the rest of our people here," Heimdall said. "We will be ready."

It was all too much. Loki's ridiculousness, Heimdall's serenity, Bucky's quiet by warm regard. The achievement of all of Thor's hopes. Tears sprang to Thor's eyes. He hugged his brother again, and Heimdall, too.

The Guardians had, by now, realized that Thor and Bucky had been detained by two men, and had come rushing back. 

"Loki," Nebula said with a nod.

"Nebula. Gamora." Loki nodded solemnly back. "Happy to see you well," he said, and sounded like he meant it.

"Likewise," Gamora replied. 

"You know each other?" Quill asked. 

"Loki was Thanos's prisoner for a time," Gamora said. "He was made to train with us, for Thanos's sport. He was a victim, too. In his own way."

It occurred to Thor that Loki may have been one of the few people Gamora truly knew in this universe, as Loki's time with her had split only after their time together.

"Thor's brother?" Drax shouted. "You live!"

"Evidently," Loki said, with curiosity in his voice. "Thor, you have gained some interesting new friends." He rounded, with much more interest, on Bucky. "And now, who is this? I had been wondering if and how this little band would make it through the final barrier. Watching you all squabble, I could not guess which two might fulfill the requirement. Heimdall assured me it was possible, but would not tell me the answer. And so, it is you? I am pleased to make your acquaintance, oh lover of my brother."

"My name's Bucky."

Loki stared at Bucky's outstretched hand before remembering to shake it. "Delighted to meet you. What fun we will have."

Bucky glanced at Thor before replying, "I know what that means."

Loki now grinned at Thor. "I like him."

"So do I," Thor replied.


End file.
